


(Never) Let Go

by Badwolf36



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2018-01-06 14:11:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badwolf36/pseuds/Badwolf36
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles has never been good at letting go of things. His dad, his guilt, and Derek Hale are no exceptions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Never) Let Go

**Title:** (Never) Let Go  
 **Fandom:** Teen Wolf  
 **Author:** [](http://badwolf36.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://badwolf36.livejournal.com/)**badwolf36**  
 **Rating:** PG-13  
 **Characters:** Stiles Stilinksi, Derek Hale, Sheriff Stilinski  
 **Word count:** 3,064  
 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Teen Wolf or any related properties.  
 **Warnings:** Set after _Lunar Ellipse._  
 **Summary:** Stiles has never been good at letting go of things. His dad, his guilt, and Derek Hale are no exceptions.

Stiles wakes up with a whimper and barely has the strength to roll over so he can vomit over the side of the bed. His faded gray T-shirt and red plaid boxer shorts twine around his body along with his sheets, holding him in place like a sweaty cocoon as stringy bile and chunks of half-digested food spill onto the carpet.

The head injury from the car crash, coupled with the side effects of not taking his Adderall regularly, have left him nauseated and achy. But that’s not what caused him to lose the small amount of the dinner he had forced down the night before.

No, that had been his subconscious, gleefully coloring in his dreams with worst-case scenarios and outcomes with the Darach and his dad and Mrs. McCall and Mr. Argent and the Alpha Pack and his friends that hadn’t come to pass. And because those alone hadn’t been enough, he’d only woken when Gerard Argent (drooling black blood; Scott had described his last encounter with the man) had taken a broadhead arrow, pulled up his lacrosse jersey (he’d been back in that basement, that awful basement) and began carving the word “USELESS” across his chest and stomach, gouging the letters in deep with the bladed arrowhead.

It was as Gerard plunged the point into his abdomen for a final blow that he managed to force himself awake.

He’s panting and crying and clutching at his chest when his dad opens the door with a quiet, “Son, you okay?” There’s a short pause, then a “Jesus, Stiles.”

His dad pads up to the unsoiled side of the bed and pulls back his covers. Stiles starts shivering immediately, unable to stop. His dad leans forward and drags Stiles’ body back until he can pick Stiles up in his arms, like he did when Stiles was just a kid. He grunts, but takes all of Stiles’ weight. Stiles whimpers, half in protest and half in real and imagined pain.

“Easy, Son,” his dad says, taking several careful steps forward in order to bring Stiles to his bathroom. He hits the light switch with his elbow before he sets Stiles down on the floor in front of the toilet. “You still feel sick?”

Stiles feels his stomach churning, but he knows that he can’t clear the sick feeling there just by vomiting. He shakes his head at his dad, who sighs and stands up in order to turn on the faucet. He fills up the glass Stiles keeps next to his toothbrush holder with water.

Crouching down again, he hands Stiles the glass, which he accepts with a shaky hand. He rinses and spits into the toilet until half the water in the glass is gone. Once he flushes, his dad moves to the doorway.

“Stay here for a second, okay?” his dad asks. Stiles gives him another weak nod and he leaves.

Stiles hears some banging around and some muffled clattering before there’s the sound of paper towels tearing and a spray bottle going off. It dimly occurs to him that his dad is cleaning up his vomit and while he feels a shred of guilt at that, mostly he just feels grateful that he’s not going to have to go back into his room and see another sign of how weak he is.

When his dad pads back in, after another trip downstairs and one outside, he drapes a soft blue blanket his mom had liked over Stiles’ shoulders. Stiles pulls it around himself, the cold from before hitting him even harder now that there’s something warm around him.

“How ya feeling?” his dad asks quietly, slipping a hand around his blanket-covered shoulders.

“Lousy,” Stiles answers honestly. “So lousy, in fact, that I can’t think of a better word. Did you know ‘lousy’ used to mean ‘infested with lice?’ That’s pretty disgusting.”

“Stiles,” his dad interrupts gently. “I want you to talk to me. Truthfully. I know you lied to me for a long time. I know you were trying to protect me. And Scott. And the rest of your friends. But I know now. I get it, for the most part. So talk to me, okay?”

Stiles flops his upper body sideways into his dad’s.

“Just…bad dreams.” He stares at the side of the toilet tank, thoughts irrevocably drawn back to Gerard and Kali and Deucalion and Matt and the Kanima and everything else that’s lent to his sleepless nights. He shivers a little, despite the fact he’s warming up. “Really bad dreams.”

“Anything you want to talk about?” his dad asks, rubbing Stiles’ arm with his free hand.

Stiles genuinely thinks about it a moment before shaking his head. “Nah, nothing good will come of it.”

“That’s no reason not to talk about something.”

Stiles just shakes his head again and his dad pauses for a moment before obviously coming to a decision.

“Okay,” he says. “Think you can go back to bed? Get some rest?”

Stiles lets out a rough chuckle. “No?”

“Want to give it a try?” his dad offers.

He turns it over in his head for a moment. On the one hand, there were the inevitable nightmares. On the other, his bathroom floor was not nearly as comfortable as his mattress.

“Yeah. Throw in a Tylenol or something to sweeten the deal though.”

His dad laughs, and it only sounds a little forced. “You’re supposed to add conditions before you agree.”

“I’ll cross hostage negotiator off my list of potential careers. Drugs?”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ll get your painkillers. Come on. Up you get,” his dad says, pulling Stiles’ arm over his shoulder and catching the blanket over his forearm when it falls as they rise.

It’s a slow shuffle back to Stiles’ bed. When his dad sets him down on the pulled-back sheets, Stiles realizes they’ve been changed, as they’re no longer soaked in sweat.

“Thanks,” he says suddenly, staring at the damp clean spot on the floor.

“Of course, kiddo,” his dad says, patting his shoulder before he walks away to fetch Stiles his painkillers.

Stiles tilts to the side until he’s sprawled against his mattress. He slides his hand up and down his stomach under his shirt, feeling the smooth, uncut skin there. There are no words carved there, he reminds himself, although the hovering fear and the lingering darkness coiled around his heart (always present, always there) make the truth hard to accept.

A few minutes later, he forces himself to stop the movement as his dad walks back in with a few white pills in his hand and another glass of water.

“Sit up. Can’t have you choking.”

Stiles know there’s a quip he’s supposed to throw in here, something pithy about surviving an Alpha Pack only to be taken out by acetaminophen. But he didn’t survive. For 16 hours, he was dead. So he just stays silent and takes the pills and the water, refusing to look at the sudden expression of concern on his dad’s face.

He drains the water and hands the glass back to his dad before either of them speaks again.

“Want me to sit with you for awhile?” his dad asks.

Stiles considers it for a moment before shaking his head. “Nah, you’ve got an early shift tomorrow.”

His dad frowns. “You come first, kiddo. I really don’t mind.”

But Stiles just shakes his head again, straightening out the covers before pulling them over himself as he wiggles into a horizontal position.

“It’s fine, Dad,” he says once he settles. “Just some bad dreams. Go back to bed so I don’t have to hear from your deputies about how you were all snappy without your eight hours.”

His dad’s frown just deepens though, and Stiles’ mind jumps to the wolfsbane-induced hallucination he’d had at Lydia’s party.

“You killed your mother. You hear me? You killed her. And now you're killing me."

He’s deep enough in the memory that he flinches when his dad moves closer, the sense of that liquor bottle flying by his face (a memory, just a bad dream, so many bad dreams) too raw and realistic.

“Stiles,” his dad says, and he sounds stricken.

Stiles bolts up again, hands flailing in front of him to try to grab his dad. He snags the man’s right wrist and reels him in until he can wrap his arms around his middle. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

His dad’s hands fall onto his shoulders before slipping down his back into a hug. “I’m sorry too, Son. For a lot of things.”

Stiles pulls back. “No, no, no. You have nothing to be sorry for. I got you into this, I got Scott into all of this. I’m the only one who should be sorry.”

His dad pulls him back into the hug. “There’s a lot of ‘sorry’ to go around, Stiles. Don’t go trying to claim it all for yourself.”

Stiles feels his throat catch suspiciously, but he ends up just nodding against his dad’s stomach.

“Why don’t you try to get some sleep?” his dad says when they finally break apart. “I think some rest would do us both good.”

He rubs a hand through Stiles’ hair, tugging gently on the longish brown locks. “You know that I’m proud of you, right?”

“I…yeah. I know, Dad.”

The sheriff puts his hand flat on the top of Stiles’ head. “I love you, Stiles.”

“Love you too, Dad.” Stiles’ dad leans down and kisses him on the forehead, something he hasn’t done since before his mom died.

“Try to get some sleep, okay?” he says as he pushes Stiles down and pulls the covers back over him. “But you call if you need me. I’m just down the hall.”

He pats Stiles’ shoulder through the covers before moving to the door. “Promise you’ll call.”

“Sure, Dad. Sleep well.”

“You too, son.”

The door clicks and Stiles waits until he hears his dad make it to his own room before he curls on his side with a sigh, fingers drifting to his stomach again.

“It’s open,” he says quietly.

His window opens a crack before it opens fully, and then Derek Hale’s denim, dark blue Henley and black leather jacket-clad body is slipping into his room.

“How long?” Stiles asks without inflection.

“Long enough,” Derek says and Stiles snorts.

“You Hales and your non-answers. Or maybe it’s a werewolf thing. Are Scott and Isaac going to start pulling this crap, too?” he asks, watching as Derek snags his computer chair by the backrest and pulls it closer to Stiles’ bed before taking a seat. He props his elbows on his knees and rest his lips against his hands, which he clasps together in front of his face.

Stiles studies him silently, fingers still tracing his flesh in search of the letter “S” he knows (it’s not really there, it’s not, it’s not) is centered right by his belly button.

“You’re leaving,” Stiles realizes aloud when Derek won’t meet his eyes.

Derek does him the courtesy of not looking surprised. “Yeah.”

This time, Stiles is the one who can’t meet his eyes when he asks, “You coming back?”

Derek hesitates and Stiles finds his fingers clenching into the flesh of his stomach.

Finally, Derek says, “I have some things I need to take care of.”

Stiles lets his gaze drift back to Derek, who has let his human nails dig into the sides of his hands. It looks painful and reminds Stiles of the pain he’s causing himself. He relaxes his grip and, after a moment, Derek does as well.

“Cora?”

“Yeah.”

“Peter?”

“He’s staying here.”

“Ah,” Stiles shuts his eyes. “I don’t trust him.”

“Probably best.”

Stiles hears his chair wheels squeak. When he opens his eyes, Derek is a little bit closer and his hands are now draped across his knees. Stiles tries to categorize the faint frown on his face, as he’s familiar with many of Derek’s frowns, but the specific emotions in this one elude classification.

“What?”

Derek hesitates again and Stiles feels like giving him a mocking pat on the shoulder for considering his words for once, but he can’t find the energy to do more than keep his fingers stroking his abs.

“Your dad,” Derek says. “He’s handling it. All of this.” He waves his hand vaguely to try to encompass the supernatural fiasco that is their lives, and Stiles almost snorts at seeing such an uncharacteristic motion from him.

“He believes me now,” Stiles says, and he doesn’t bother trying not to sound bitter. It had hurt when his dad didn’t believe him, almost more than being beaten by Gerard or hunted by his best friend or being tossed around while trying to keep the mythical beings he called his friends (or just people who didn’t deserve to die) alive. But nothing hurts worse than the certainty that his mom would have believed him, and that those words, “Mom would have believed me,” could have been the last words he flung at his dad.

“It’s not always easy to accept, even if you have suspicions,” Derek says calmly.

He wants to yell at Derek for that, but the words sound just like something Stiles would say, so he stays silent.

Silence with Derek isn’t nearly as hard as it used to be.

“The ‘Beacon’ part of ‘Beacon Hills’ is literal again,” Stiles says finally, concentrating on Derek’s eyebrows and the way they shift sharply.

“I can’t blame you for what you did. It was stupid, yes, but brave.”

“Scott,” he realizes, because the explanation had to come from somewhere.

“And Deaton and Isaac.”

“I’m only choosing to acknowledge the ‘brave’ part of that,” Stiles says with a pomposity he doesn’t feel.

“Of course you would,” Derek huffs, but Stiles swears he sees the corner of Derek’s lips quirk infinitesimally. Derek’s expression sobers quickly. “I won’t ask if you regret it either.”

“My dad’s alive. Everything else…” he trails off, hand still pressed to his stomach.

“Yeah,” Derek says softly. They sit there quietly; Derek leaning back in Stiles’ chair and Stiles shifting so the sheet that’s bunched up under his hip smoothes out.

“Scott’s an alpha now,” Stiles says, unwilling to let the comfortable silence slip away into something uneasy.

Derek snorts. “I know. I was there.”

“I hear you’re not,” Stiles whispers and Derek freezes for a moment before his postures relaxes abruptly.

“Cora,” he says. “My choice.”

Stiles smiles as he looks at him. “So we both made crazy-big sacrifices for family that day.”

Derek grunts before a self-deprecating smiles graces his face. “Yeah, guess we did.”

“Show me?” Stiles asks tentatively, finally moving his hand to gesture at Derek’s eyes.

Derek studies him for a moment.

“You know what it means now.” A statement, not a question, but Stiles still says, “Yeah.”

Derek sighs, but gives Stiles a slight nod. He shuts his eyes momentarily, and when they blink open again, the irises are a luminescent shade of cerulean.

“Beautiful,” Stiles whispers, and he’s so blaming the head injury for actually letting that slip. Derek starts when he speaks, the color in his eyes fading back to their normal green-hazel.

“My mom used to say that,” he whispers at the same volume Stiles had, and his expression is a strange mix of tormented and nostalgic.

Stiles rolls over onto his back, turning his gaze to the ceiling to give Derek a moment of privacy. Black starts seeping into his vision from the edges, blotting out the white ceiling. At the same time, that constricting feeling starts to hit his heart, squeezing harder and harder.

“Stiles?” Derek asks, and he sounds concerned. Stiles realizes the other man must have heard his heart rate skyrocket.

Vision still clouded by tendrils of darkness, Stiles turns enough to catch Derek’s eyes. Derek’s got a fang poking over his lower lip and he looks a second away from wolfing out fully.

“Deaton said there could be consequences,” Stiles says, trying to sound composed and not sure how close he’s getting. He reaches out until he can put his hand over the one Derek has clutched in the thick fabric of his jeans. “Can’t say I thought of all of them, or how bad they’d be. But you didn’t ask me if I regretted it.”

“No,” Derek says, bringing up his other hand and covering the one Stiles has over his own. “No, I didn’t.”

Stiles hangs in that moment with Derek, arm stretched over the gap between them and hand slowly warming between Derek’s palm and the back of his other hand. Derek’s hands are smooth, and Stiles files away the fact that werewolf healing prevents calluses for a revisit at a later date.

Eventually, Derek pats Stiles’ hand and Stiles lets his hand slip off Derek’s knee to land gently on the floor.

“Have a safe trip,” Stiles says as Derek stands.

Derek’s lips quirk again, but it looks half-hearted. “I’ll try. Stay out of trouble.”

Stiles snorts and retorts, “I’ll try.”

Derek reaches out and tugs the blanket over Stiles and Stiles had to blink away sudden tears as the gesture makes the darkness recede, both in his vision and around his heart.

“I’m not saying goodbye,” he says suddenly, fiercely, as he props himself up on his elbows.

Derek looks a bit stunned (and really, Stiles has never seen this much emotion from the man) before he shoves Stiles back into his mattress with a hand between his shoulder blades.

“Hey!” he yells into his pillow, remembering too late that his dad probably hasn’t managed to go back to sleep yet.

The warm pressure on his back disappears and he splutters out the mouthful of pillow he’d been forced to take. He rears back into a kneeling position to find Derek on the other side of the window, carefully easing it down. Before he shuts it though, he looks at Stiles through the clear pane and says, “See you, Stiles.”

Then the window’s shut and Derek is gone.

A few moments later, his dad is in his room again, standing by where Stiles is still kneeling dumbstruck among his wrecked covers.

“Are you okay? I heard you shout.”

Stiles sucks in a breath, eyes still on the window.

“You know, Dad,” he says. “I think I feel a little better now.”

 


End file.
